A Quick Update on the Respins

This is going to be a quick post. I've made a couple changes to UberBang, such as installing the Murrine theme engine to make the #! theme look right and making VolumeIcon and NM-applet start on startup. I've combined all these and released version 10.04.1 of UberBang, and it can be downloaded here in the same SourceForge project page.
Also, I am working on a new release of Fresh OS ("Elementary"). I will likely be dropping the "Traditional" version for this release because the newest build of Linux Mint "Debian" seems to fill that void adequately now (as it now has all the new features of version 10 "Julia"). I'm not entirely sure about "Light" though.
Finally, I may rerelease Oxidized Trinity 6 "Squeeze" with the Debian Live Installer packages included as well because the Remastersys Debian Installer can be unreliable.
That's all folks. I'm looking forward to a bright, fun, and productive 2011!

Featured Comments: Week of 2010 October 17

There were only 2 posts that garnered comments this past week, so I'll post most of those comments.

Will KPresenter and Gnumeric Please Come Forward?

Reader murray has this to say about OpenOffice.org Calc and Gnumeric: "I tried to use gnumeric instead of openoffice, due to the fact that I need to load 40M DBF's each month, and that where incredible slow in openoffice (more than 10 minutes). More, if you take in account that gnumeric loads it in 30 SECONDS. Lately, openoffice calc gets way better, taking 2 mins. The thing is, that in gnumeric, decimals gets lost, and later I realize that was global locale settings that affects the way gnumeric interprets numbers. Thats incredible for me, and more, the way to fix it via some obscure global (reeeeealy hard to discover) command-line setting before execute gnumeric is a shame".
Commenter twitter advised against using spreadsheet programs for real heavy-duty number-crunching: "Gnumeric is a nice spreadsheet but spreadsheets are not adequate for real science. When your data goes beyond a few kilobytes, it's time for shell scripts and the specialized tools available in good gnu/linux distributions like Debian."

Preview: Pardus 2011 Beta

Reader Sylvain seemed to have more success with Pardus 2011 Beta, linking to his review of it on his blog (in French): "It rox on my computer... First with VirtualBox then in a dedicated Partition. Pardus looks great http://linuxadvantage.blogspot.com/2010/10/presentation-de-pardus-2011.html". It really does look good, so I'm wondering why I had so much trouble with it.
That said, commenter Brian experienced trouble with it as well, though he was able to make it to the desktop, at least: "It isn't too great on my PC either. The alpha release had to use KDE safe node to boot into a desktop. pisi update-repo and pisi update seemed to upgrade the system until I installed the nvidia drivers, then that failed as well.A fresh beta install attempt ends with a slew of partition errors and a traceback report with no viable option to send it back to the developers."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's post, and remember, if you enjoy the material, please do subscribe!
On a somewhat related note, I am essentially done with my latest Fresh OS creations, so keep your eyes peeled, for I will probably upload them to the SourceForge project page sometime this week. Please do check them out and let me know what you think!

An Update on my Respins

I want to take this time to update you all on the progress of my respins and my future plans for them.
Both wikis (Oxidized Trinity and Fresh OS) are up and running. I've included stuff like download and installation procedures and desktop overviews; I'll include more stuff like pictures and system requirements as soon as I have a good bit of free time.
Oxidized Trinity seems to be the more popular one (download statistics-wise), though admittedly, it has been available longer than Fresh OS. Within Fresh OS, as I've split Fresh OS into regular (Linux Mint "Debian" base) and Light (wattOS R2 base) versions, surprisingly, Fresh OS Light is more popular than Fresh OS by over a factor of 4 (then again, neither one has been downloaded especially much). That leads nicely into the future plans for each.
As Oxidized Trinity is based on Kubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx", there's not really a whole lot more for me to do. The next version of Oxidized Trinity will either be based on Kubuntu 12.04 LTS (whatever it's called) or Debian 6 "Squeeze" or Linux Mint "Debian" with the KDE 3.5.12 Trinity packages. Other than that, I won't actively be working on it; for now, it's pretty much a static distribution.
Fresh OS, on the other hand, is more dynamic by nature of being a rolling-release distribution. That's combined with the fact that Debian 6 "Squeeze" (though, in an update to my first preview of Debian 6 "Squeeze" GNOME, I want to let you all know that the Debian developers have promised to release this version of Debian before Christmas) hasn't been released yet, so there are still quite a few updates coming in. I'm a little surprised that Fresh OS Light is the more popular one, considering that the semi-official LXDE Ubuntu variant Lubuntu already does what Fresh OS Light does, and better at that; given this and the fact that Fresh OS with GNOME is almost as light on RAM as Fresh OS Light, I will not be developing another version of Fresh OS Light.
Instead, I will try to release 3 versions of Fresh OS akin to how there are 2 slightly different versions of Peppermint OS (which I recently reviewed). The basic desktop will remain essentially the same, with a panel on top with the MintMenu, a clock, a global menu bar applet, and a couple other applets. All of them will use Nautilus Elementary and the Elementary theme. All of them will probably use the applet that combines the window title and buttons with the panel to save space. The differences will be in some default applications and icon sets, as well as window navigation. The first will be a "standard" version, with a panel with window switchers on the bottom. It will also use Mozilla Firefox as the default browser and Pidgin as the default IM client. Finally, it will use Linux Mint's new icons (green modifications of the Elementary icons), which have recently been released along with a release candidate of Linux Mint 10 "Julia" GNOME (which I also hope to test soon, as I am a fan of Linux Mint). (The reason why they can go into Fresh OS is because some of the new packages for the new Linux Mint release will also go into the (unstable) repository for Linux Mint "Debian".) The second will be an "Elementary" version and will essentially be a port of a standard Elementary OS desktop; it will use the Elementary icons, Midori as the default web browser, Empathy as the default IM Client, AbiWord and Gnumeric instead of OpenOffice.org (though the latter will still be included), and a dock (Docky) at the bottom for switching windows. The third will be a "Light" version and will use Chromium as the default web browser, Pidgin as the IM client, AbiWord and Gnumeric instead of OpenOffice.org (which again will be included, but not the default), the new Mint icons, and a tint2 panel at the bottom for switching windows.
How does all this sound? I'm excited! Anyway, stay tuned for an upcoming preview of Linux Mint 10 "Julia" GNOME!

FOLLOW-UP: SourceForge, Pages, and Respins

I mentioned in my last post on the topic that Oxidized Trinity is now on SourceForge. I am linking straight to the download link here. Also, Oxidized Trinity now has a wiki page (which I haven't had the time to develop, but when I have a bit more free time, I will get around to it).
Finally, I have semi-successfully created my respin of Linux Mint "Debian" with the Elementary theme. Yay! It too is on SourceForge for download. Please note that as I made it with Remastersys Backup (as opposed to Remastersys Dist), it is not an installable live DVD. Also, the username is "live" and the password is "vbox". (This project does not yet have a wiki page; it does have a name, though: "FreshOS".) Have fun!

SourceForge, Pages, and Respins

I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but I have added new static pages to this blog. I wanted to mention this again as I will probably be adding at least 2 new pages in the near future.
I made a remastered version of Kubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" Trinity, which I have called "Oxidized Trinity". I no longer have to worry about Google Docs's upload limits, as this project and the ISO file are now on SourceForge. Yay! Please do download it, check it out, and be on the lookout for any bugs present in the live image, and please do let me know what you think of it!
Also, I have been working (to partial success) on a remastered version of Linux Mint "Debian" which I am calling "FreshOS". It replaces Linux Mint's "Shiki" theme with the extremely popular and handsome "Elementary" GNOME theme, and also contains the Nautilus Elementary mod, the GNOME global menu panel applet, and the Midori web browser. I have tried making a remastered ISO from this, but while the live image boots, no combination of user IDs and passwords seems to work. I hope to get this fixed soon, and when that happens, I'll upload this remastered distribution to SourceForge as well. That said, I am getting busier with coursework, so I will not have as much time to work with these things as before. In any case, please do check out Oxidized Trinity and be on the lookout for FreshOS. Thanks!